Garden Philosophy: [Slow] Growth

You lay there dried, shrivelled, tucked behind a jar. Finding you is nothing short of a treasure.

As unpacked days prove to be space to play, in wonder I peal back your skin, your shell. There: I see where life is preserved. I am a vessel of movement, poking your insides into tiny holes of home – into The Earth. And with every action of unity comes bursts of curiosity.

Will you sprout, bud, bloom?
Have you genetically been claimed, premodified?

Daily I visit you with coffee by my side. The illusion of time seeps deeper into the crevices of my mind, causing discomfort as though worms from that very earth are dancing through my skin. In attempt to counter, I share your story with others. Knowledge of our world, of existence, from our ancestors forms support and comforts with the reassurance of possibilities. Habitual expectations shift with every breath of patience translated into a mode of curiosity.

Illusionarly easing the pulses in my body, mornings plead with me to curl into the windowsill with you and your leafiness, to wrap my fingers around warm brews, a promise to restore wonder. Yet, still it is my eyes that are incapable of capturing the nearly undetectable measurements of the space you crawl along. And as I project this embedded obsession of growth, I clichély adore you reaching for light, defying gravity with every movement toward the sky. Again, with every new feature, I claw at a ‘fix for knowledge’ in attempt to defy time.

Using not my eyes and their captures, but the unfathomablness of imagination, I pause because I am. This cycle of curiosity, squirminess, then a search for something rather than an embrace of patience. I turn to write: to breath with wonder. A process as if to move my limbs along ocean floors propelling myself not towards, not through, but being. To curate details in a, too, slow moving process, paralleling universes, these cycles, meditatively connecting between wonder, hope, and illusion. Surrounding and making sense of our connections, of our life(s) and our growth(s) as I joyously obsess over a journey with these chilli peppers.